The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatically terminating the operation of a clothes dryer at optimum timing.
Most clothes dryers currently in use include a manually presettable timing device for setting the operating time of the machine. Since this manual setting is based on the user's own experience or manufacturer's guidelines, a substantial amount of energy would be lost if the timer has been set to a longer period than is actually needed or if the user would have to reset the timer again to repeat the operation if the timer is set to a shorter period than optimum.
One prior art approach employed a dryness detector which typically measures the electrical resistance of the clothes to automatically shut off the dryer when a predetermined resistance value is reached. However, there is almost no distinction in electrical resistance value when the dryness factor approaches a 100% value, and precision timing has been difficult to achieve.